This day in history
Today is Friday, Jan. 26, the 26th day of 2024 There are 340 days left in the year.
Birthdays: Cartoonist Jules Feiffer is 95. Sportscaster-actor Bob Uecker is 89. Actor Scott Glenn is 85. Activist Angela Davis is 80. Actor Richard Portnow is 77. Rock musician Corky Laing (Mountain) is 76. Actor David Strathairn is 75. Producer-director Mimi Leder is 72. Singer-songwriter Lucinda Williams is 71. Reggae musician Norman Hassan of UB40 is 66. Comedian-talk show host Ellen DeGeneres is 66. Rock musician Charlie Gillingham of Counting Crows is 64. Hockey Hall of Famer Wayne Gretzky is 63. Musician Andrew Ridgeley is 61. R&B singer Jazzie B of Soul II Soul is 61. Director Lenny Abrahamson is 58. Gospel singer Kirk Franklin is 54. Retired NBA player Vince Carter is 47. Actor Colin O’Donoghue is 43.
► 250 years ago, simmering tensions over an outbreak of smallpox and over a private hospital built on what is now Children’s Island off Marblehead exploded into a night of destruction. Some townspeople were fearful that the hospital – built by leading patriots Eldbridge Gerry, John Stover, and others to inoculate willing participants against smallpox – was actually fanning the outbreak. A group of them rowed to the island under the cover of night and set the hospital and outbuildings on fire. When two men were later identified as suspects and jailed in Salem, a mob of their supporters stormed the jail and freed the men.
► In 1863, during the American Civil War, the Massachusetts governor received permission from secretary of war to raise a militia organization for men of African descent. That militia would become the famed 54th Massachusetts Regiment.
► In 1915, President Woodrow Wilson signed the Rocky Mountain National Park Act, which created America’s 10th national park.
► In 1962, the United States launched Ranger 3 to land scientific instruments on the moon. (The probe ended up missing its target by more than 22,000 miles.)
► In 1992, Democratic presidential candidate Bill Clinton, appearing with his wife, Hillary, on CBS’ “60 Minutes,” acknowledged “causing pain in my marriage” but said past problems were not relevant to the campaign.
► In 1993, Vaclav Havel was elected president of the newly formed Czech Republic.
► In 1998, President Clinton forcefully denied having an affair with a former White House intern, telling reporters, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.”
► In 2005, a helicopter crashed in western Iraq, killing 30 Marines and a Navy medic aboard.
► In 2009, Nadya Suleman gave birth at Kaiser Permanente Bellflower Medical Center in California to six boys and two girls; criticism came after the public learned that the unemployed, single mother had gotten pregnant with the octuplets and six elder children through in vitro fertilization.
► In 2020, NBA legend Kobe Bryant, his 13-year-old daughter Gianna, and seven others were killed when their helicopter plunged into a steep hillside in dense morning fog in Southern California; the former Lakers star was 41.
► In 2022, Spotify said it would grant the request of veteran rocker Neil Young to have his music removed from the streaming platform after he objected to the company's decision to allow COVID-19 misinformation to spread in podcasts.
► Last year, Israeli forces killed at least nine Palestinians and wounded several others in a large-scale raid in the occupied West Bank, the deadliest single operation in the territory in two decades.